The invention relates to an apparatus for coating substrates, preferably flat, more or less plate-like substrates--especially curved glass plates--by means of a vacuum coating process, the apparatus being equipped with a plurality of closed processing chambers each provided with an entrance and exit closable opening.
It is known in apparatus for coating substrates by vacuum coating processes, especially sputtering processes, to provide a plurality of individual processing chambers which are arranged in line one behind the other, so that the substrate held by a substrate carrier can be advanced from one chamber to the next and thus can be fed to different processes (EP 0 440 259). The known apparatus has the disadvantage that such a system, with chambers disposed next to one another (a so-called "in-line" system) requires a relatively great amount of space and needs a comparatively great floor space and clean-room area. There is the added difficulty that, in order to separate the chambers cleanly with buffer chambers, additional vacuum chambers are needed which further increase the cost and enlarge the apparatus.
It is an object of the present invention to create an especially compact apparatus which, with a minimum of chambers, permits multi-layer coating of high quality. Furthermore, the apparatus must be comparatively inexpensive to manufacture, i.e., it is to be made with a minimum of chamber wall surfaces.